Charles remained alone the whole afternoon; they had taken Berthe to Madame Homais’s; Félicité was in the room upstairs with Madame Lefrançois.
In the evening he had some visitors. He rose, pressed their hands, unable to speak. Then they sat down near one another, and formed a large semicircle in front of the fire. With lowered faces, and swinging one leg crossed over the other knee, they uttered deep sighs at intervals; each one was inordinately bored, and yet none would be the first to go.
Homais, when he returned at nine o’clock (for the last two days only Homais seemed to have been on the Place), was laden with a stock of camphor, of benzine, and aromatic herbs. He also carried a large jar full of chlorine water, to keep off all miasmata. Just then the servant, Madame Lefrançois, and Madame Bovary, senior, were busy about Emma, finishing dressing her, and they were drawing down the long stiff veil that covered her to her satin shoes.
Félicité was sobbing – ‘Ah! my poor mistress! my poor mistress!’
‘Look at her,’ said the landlady, sighing; ‘how pretty she still is! Now, couldn’t you swear she was going to get up in a minute?’
Then they bent over her to put on her wreath. They had to raise the head a little, and a rush of black liquid issued, as if she were vomiting, from her mouth.
‘Oh, goodness! The dress; take care!’ cried Madame Lefrançois. ‘Now, just come and help,’ she said to the chemist. ‘Perhaps you’re afraid?’
‘I afraid?’ replied he, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I dare say! I’ve seen all sorts of things at the hospital when I was studying pharmacy. We used to make punch in the dissecting room! Nothingness does not terrify a philosopher; and, as I often say, I even intend to leave my body to the hospitals, in order, later on, to serve science.’
The curé on his arrival enquired how Monsieur Bovary was, and, on the reply of the druggist, went on – ‘The blow, you see, is still too recent.’
Then Homais congratulated him on not being exposed, like other people, to the loss of a beloved companion; whence there followed a discussion on the celibacy of priests.
‘For,’ said the chemist, ‘it is unnatural that a man should do without women! There have been crimes – ’
‘But, good heaven!’ cried the ecclesiastic, ‘how do you expect an individual who is married to keep the secrets of the confessional, for example?’
Homais fell foul of the confessional. Bournisien defended it; he enlarged on the acts of restitution that it brought about. He cited various anecdotes about thieves who had suddenly become honest. Military men on approaching the tribunal of penitence had felt the scales fall from their eyes. At Fribourg there was a minister –
His companion was asleep. Then he felt somewhat stifled by the over-heavy atmosphere of the room; he opened the window; this awoke the chemist.
‘Come, take a pinch of snuff,’ he said to him. ‘Take it, it’ll relieve you.’
A continual barking was heard in the distance. ‘Do you hear that dog howling?’ said the chemist.
‘They smell the dead,’ replied the priest. ‘It’s like bees; they leave their hives on the decease of any person.’
Homais made no remark upon these prejudices, for he had again dropped asleep. Monsieur Bournisien, stronger than he, went on moving his lips gently for some time, then insensibly his chin sank down, he let fall his big black boot, and began to snore.
They sat opposite one another, with protruding stomachs, puffed-up faces, and frowning looks, after so much disagreement uniting at last in the same human weakness, and they moved no more than the corpse by their side, that seemed to be sleeping.
Charles coming in did not wake them. It was the last time; he came to bid her farewell.
The aromatic herbs were still smoking, and spirals of bluish vapour blended at the window-sash with the fog that was coming in. There were few stars, and the night was warm. The wax of the candles fell in great drops upon the sheets of the bed. Charles watched them burn, tiring his eyes against the glare of their yellow flame.
The watering on the satin gown shimmered white as moonlight. Emma was lost beneath it; and it seemed to him that, spreading beyond her own self, she blended confusedly with everything around her – the silence, the night, the passing wind, the damp odours rising from the ground.
Then suddenly he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on a bench against the thorn hedge, or else at Rouen in the streets, on the threshold of their house, in the yard at Bertaux. He again heard the laughter of the happy boys beneath the apple trees: the room was filled with the perfume of her hair; and her dress rustled in his arms with a noise like electricity. The dress was still the same.
For a long while he thus recalled all his lost joys, her attitudes, her movements, the sound of her voice. Upon one fit of despair followed another, and even others, inexhaustible as the waves of an overflowing sea.
A terrible curiosity seized him. Slowly, with the tips of his fingers, palpitating, he lifted her veil. But he uttered a cry of horror that awoke the other two.
They dragged him down into the sitting-room. Then Félicité came up to say that he wanted some of her hair.
‘Cut some off,’ replied the druggist.
And as she did not dare to, he himself stepped forward, scissors in hand. He trembled so that he pierced the skin of the temple in several places. At last, stiffening himself against emotion, Homais gave two or three great cuts at random that left white patches amongst that beautiful black hair.
The chemist and the curé plunged anew into their occupations, not without sleeping from time to time, of which they accused each other reciprocally at each fresh awakening. Then Monsieur Bournisien sprinkled the room with holy water and Homais threw a little chlorine water on the floor.
Félicité had taken care to put on the chest of drawers, for each of them, a bottle of brandy, some cheese, and a large roll; and the druggist, who could not hold out any longer, about four in the morning sighed – ‘My word! I should like to take some sustenance.’
The priest did not need any persuading; he went out to go and say mass, came back, and then they ate and hobnobbed, giggling a little without knowing why, stimulated by that vague gaiety that comes upon us after times of sadness, and at the last glass the priest said to the druggist, as he clapped him on the shoulder – ‘We shall end by understanding one another.’
In the passage downstairs they met the undertaker’s men, who were coming in. Then Charles for two hours had to suffer the torture of hearing the hammer resound against the wood. Next day they lowered her into her oak coffin, that was fitted into the other two; but as the bier was too large, they had to fill up the gaps with the wool of a mattress. At last, when the three lids had been planed down, nailed, soldered, it was placed outside in front of the door; the house was thrown open, and the people of Yonville began to flock round.
Old Rouault arrived. He fainted on the Place when he saw the black cloth.
10
He had only received the chemist’s letter thirty-six hours after the event; and, in consideration for his feelings, Homais had so worded it that it was impossible to make out what it was all about.
First, the old fellow had fallen as if struck by apoplexy. Next, he understood that she was not dead, but she might be. At last, he had put on his blouse, taken his hat, fastened his spurs to his boots, and set out at full speed; and the whole of the way old Rouault, panting, was torn by anguish. Once even he was obliged to dismount. He was dizzy; he heard voices round about him; he felt himself going mad.
Day broke. He saw three black hens asleep in a tree. He shuddered, horrified at this omen. Then he promised the Holy Virgin three chasubles for the church, that he would go barefoot from the graveyard at the Bertaux to the chapel of Vassonville.
He entered Maromme shouting for the people of the inn, burst open the door with a thrust of his shoulder, made for a sack of oats, emptied a bottle of sweet cider into the manger, and again mounted his nag, whose feet struck fire as it dashed along.
He told himself that no doubt they would save her; the doctors would discover some remedy surely. He remembered all the miraculous cures he had heard of. Then she appeared to him dead. There she was before his eyes, lying on her back in the middle of the road. He reined up, and the hallucination vanished.
At Quincampoix, to give himself heart, he drank three cups of coffee in succession. He fancied they had made a mistake in the name in writing. He looked for the letter in his pocket, felt it there, but did not dare to open it.
